Many of the YouTube videos you watch and love are also shared on sites beyond YouTube.com. Our site is built, in part, on social tools like comments, video responses and ratings. In recent years we’ve worked to integrate these social signals across other popular social platforms. For example, we see more than 400 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link, and over 150 years worth of YouTube video is watched on Facebook every day.

We've always believed that there are great conversations happening all the time off of YouTube.com, and that commentary has the potential to enrich your experience when watching and discovering video on YouTube itself. So today we're excited to announce we’ve acquired Fflick, a talented team that analyzes social media data to surface great content and the discussions around it.

We were impressed by the technical talent, design instincts and entrepreneurial spirit of the Fflick team. As part of YouTube, the Fflick team will help us build features to connect you with the great videos talked about all over the web, and surface the best of those conversations for you to participate in.

We look forward to rolling out more features that help you enjoy and discover new videos to watch, so stay tuned!

On July 24, 2010, thousands of people around the world uploaded videos of their lives to YouTube to take part in “Life in a Day,” a historic cinematic experiment to document a single day on earth. From Australia to Zambia, more than 80,000 videos, totaling 4,500 hours of footage, were submitted to the project. After months of hard work, Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald and a team of editors have created a 90-minute documentary film that gives a surprising, honest and entertaining self-portrait of our world.

While “Life in a Day” will be officially released later this year, tonight at 7pm (GMT) you have a very special opportunity to tune in to a rebroadcast of the world premiere from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

You may have noticed we've been experimenting with a new YouTube homepage. After countless user studies and community surveys, one thing came in loud and clear: the homepage in its current form doesn’t mean much to most of you, and could be more personally relevant. So the goal of this experiment was to put more of an emphasis on 'videos for you'.

To pave the way for this experiment, we removed some of the less-used modules such as 'Videos Being Watched Now'. Then we moved modules like 'Spotlight' and 'Featured Videos' over to the right side. All of these changes were to make room for a combined list of personally relevant videos made up of recommendations for you, your subscriptions activity, and videos being shared by your friends.

Recently we opened up the experimental homepage to anyone who wanted to try it out. Millions of users opted in and now have this new version set as their homepage. Many of the people who tried the experimental homepage filled out our feedback form. While not everyone loved it, most people thought the new homepage was better than the old homepage.

Here are some of the enhancements offered by the new homepage (logged in users only):

Increased focus on videos that matter to you (subscriptions, friend's sharing, recommendations)

You can easily filter your homepage to show only the latest uploads from your subscriptions

Don't miss anything; if a channel uploads four videos in a day, you’ll see all four - instead of just the latest video

Quick access to the inbox when you have new messages or comments

Knows what you have seen (videos you've watched are grayed out)

Remove any video (hover and click the "x" button)

Although some of you might miss some features, we think this latest version is a step in the right direction. It’s simpler, more personal, and it makes it easier to follow and watch the videos that are meaningful to you. So today we're rolling out this new homepage for all logged in users worldwide.

We're dedicated to making YouTube the best place for you to discover and share great videos. Please send us your feedback in a video, in the forums, on this blog or on Twitter. As always, we’ll be listening and taking your feedback very seriously.

Your votes are in. The professionals have had their say. And now, 101 people from more than 30 countries around the world are heading to Sydney Opera House to perform together in March as the YouTube Symphony Orchestra 2011.

These final 101 outstanding musicians — who range in age from 14 to 49, and hail from five different continents — have emerged from the 336 finalists selected last month by partner orchestras worldwide (including London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and Sydney Symphony). Your votes on those finalists then helped artistic advisor Michael Tilson Thomas and composer Mason Bates settle on the final line-up.

We want to open up every stage of the orchestra process. We called for auditions from around the world on YouTube and we were blown away by the amazing videos we received in response, the YouTube community voted on their favourites and visited the channel in their millions, and now we’re inviting you to join the winning musicians as they begin their creative journey to Sydney. We’ll post their videos and behind-the-scenes footage of the orchestra, from rehearsal and master classes to performance, to the YouTube Symphony channel, and to our mobile apps (which you can download on the Android Market by searching for 'YouTube Symphony Orchestra' or Apple App Store) and in March we’ll start broadcasting from Sydney, so tune in!

In December, we announced that “Life in a Day,” a documentary film directed by Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald, produced by Ridley Scott, and filmed on July 24, 2010, by thousands of YouTube users around the world, was finished—and would have its world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival on January 27.

Today we’d like to share with you the first in a series of clips we’ll release between now and the world premiere. In this clip, beautifully shot by Toniu Xou and Patricia Marinez del Hoyoa of Spain, a young girl climbs a human castle in the small town of San Jaume dels Domenys in the Spanish province of Tarragona.

If watching this clip gets you excited for more, subscribe to the Life in a Day channel to be automatically updated when new clips are released.

And, most importantly, don’t forget to tune in to the world premiere of “Life In A Day” at am GMT on Friday, January 28, to see the 1,125 clips—out of more than 80,000 submitted—that made it into the final film.

Live in an incompatible time zone? Not to worry. The film will be re-broadcast at 7pm on Friday, January 28, in your local time zone, whichever that may be. This will be your only chance to see “Life In A Day” before it is released later in 2011, so don’t miss out!

And for those of you who want to experience Sundance even more intimately, check out the Life In A Day channel daily from January 24 to January 27 to see on-the-ground updates from Kevin Macdonald and a group of contributors to the project who Kevin invited to join him for the world premiere. You can also submit questions on the channel during that time for a chance to take part in a live Q&A with Kevin and the 20 contributors following the world premiere.